Forward the Original Title ‘Arbitrum One 三周年：从 0 到 200 亿 TVL，起底 L2 巨擘成长史’

It is not enough to talk about real success in Web3 without going through a complete bull-bear cycle.

The so-called time test is nothing more than stretching the dimensions, abandoning false trends of misjudgment, and seeing the true nature of demand. This is especially applicable to the involuted L2 track. The 2020 DeFi Summer has further exposed the performance limitations of Ethereum, and L2 has emerged in response and is regarded as a necessary expansion solution for the blockchain to host large-scale users.

In the past four years, hundreds of L2 companies have competed. Many projects have disappeared in the long bear market, but there are also many projects that have withstood the test of time and built their own ecological Guangsha step by step. Among them,Decision One is definitely a highlight.

On August 31, 2024, Arbitrum One celebrates its third anniversary.

After three years of turmoil and two cycles of bulls and bears, Arbitrum One has developed into an industry giant in L2 and even Web3:TVL has exceeded US$14.75 billion and is far ahead among L2s. It has more than 36 million independent addresses and more than 2,000 ecological projects. It is the L2 with the largest volume and the richest ecosystem in the eyes of many people.

On the occasion of this third anniversary,Arbitrum official Chinese communityA series of celebration activities including Twitter Giveaway, Chinese AMA, etc. were also launched simultaneously on September 4th: participating can not only win exquisite peripherals, but also review the journey together with many well-known industry leaders, outstanding developers, and core contributors. , looking forward to the next milestone of Arbitrum One.

While actively participating in the third anniversary celebration, let us look back at Arbitrum One’s growth path and review its successful strategy.

Birth: Blockchain cannot bear the pressure, Arbitrum One comes at the right time

Let’s turn the time back to 2021, when Arbitrum One was born.

Previously, DeFi continued to develop in depth, NFTs were coming fiercely, and on-chain interactions were more frequent. As the birthplace of DeFi, the Ethereum mainnet could only handle approximately 15 transactions per second, which caused serious on-chain congestion and high Gas. It also helps the industry seek changes:

On the one hand, Ethereum has started a long road to upgrade to Ethereum 2.0;

On the other hand, new public chains and L2 have emerged one after another, aiming to expand blockchain performance and absorb the value spillover of Ethereum.

Arbitrum One was born out of this situation.

As an Ethereum L2 expansion solution based on Optimistic Rollup technology, the Arbitrum One mainnet was launched on August 31, 2021. It is the first batch of Optimistic Rollups L2 to be launched on the mainnet. In fact, the technology behind Arbitrum One Service provider Offchain Labs is also one of the first teams to focus on L2 research and development.

As early as 2018, former White House technology official and Princeton University computer professor Ed Felten and two Princeton computer doctoral students Steven Goldfeder and Harry Kalodner made forward-looking judgments on the performance difficulties that Ethereum will face in the future, and then the three established Offchain Labs started L2 research. Between 2019 and 2022, Offchain Labs received a total of US$120 million in financing, with a valuation of over US$1.2 billion.

The strong technical background also gives Arbitrum One outstanding technical advantages in all aspects, one of which is the multi-round interactive fraudulent proof.

We know that L2 improves the performance of the main chain by moving a large amount of computing and storage requirements of L1 to L2, and during the flow of data between L1 and L2, it must be ensured that the data synchronized to L1 is valid.

Arbitrum One proposes multiple rounds of interactive fraudulent proofs based on Optimstic Rollup fraudulent proofs.Its operating logic can be briefly summarized as:

The validator of L2 synchronizes the compressed data to L1 and pledges the digital assets used as guarantee. If someone disputes the transaction data of the Rollup block, a challenge needs to be initiated and the digital assets used as guarantee are also pledged. The verifier and the challenger continue to split the disputed steps through dichotomy under the blockchain until the scope of the dispute is reduced to a specific step, and then the step is judged on the L1 chain to efficiently resolve the dispute. .

All links are under contract control, and no party can cheat. In this way, Arbitrum One not only ensures the security and validity of data, but also basically inherits the Ethereum main network in terms of security. It also achieves extremely low transaction fees, which is very suitable for the development of DeFi and NFT.

Of course, in 2021, when “the world has been suffering from Ethereum performance for a long time”, with in-depth exploration of market pain points, full research and development on the L2 track in the past three years, and as the first batch of Optimistic Rollups L2 to be launched on the main network, it has seized the lead. The development advantage not only made Arbitrum One’s birth at the right time, but also allowed it to achieve outstanding performance at the beginning of its launch.

According to official social media, Arbitrum One has more than 100 ecological deployment projects since its launch, including many leading DeFi protocols such as Uniswap, Sushiswap, Curve, etc. This is due to the fact that Arbitrum One is almost 100% compatible with EVM, making it possible to deploy projects from Ethereum Ecological high-quality projects can be easily and efficiently transplanted.

The prosperous ecology has also brought enviable on-chain activity:

In terms of TVL, according to L2 Beat data, when Arbitrum One was launched on September 14, 2021, the total TVL of all Ethereum L2 was approximately US$3 billion, while Arbitrum One TVL reached 2.2 billion just two weeks after the mainnet was launched. The U.S. dollar has grown approximately 2,411% over the past seven days.

In terms of the number of addresses, according to arbiscan.io data, the number of independent addresses of Arbitrum One has exceeded 100,000 in half a month. On September 12, 267,608 on-chain transactions further demonstrated the enthusiasm of community participation. At the same time, the average Gas The cost is greatly reduced compared to Ethereum.

It can be said that at the beginning of its launch, Arbitrum One has already secured the top spot in L2, both ecologically and on-chain. As the saying goes: Starting a business is not easy, but staying in business is even harder. In the past three years, in the face of more diverse demands from larger users and increasingly fierce competition on the track, how to always maintain a competitive advantage has become a more difficult issue than achieving a “good start”.

Based on this perspective, reviewing Arbitrum One’s current achievements at the important juncture of its third anniversary seems to have become even more valuable.

Growth: The success of Arbitrum One, the L2 giant that always ranks first in TVL

The community has always regarded Arbitrum One as the second-layer network with the highest starting point, the earliest start, and the most mature ecosystem so far.

Such discussions are not groundless, but are supported by practical and abundant data. We usually judge the size and prosperity of a chain based on TVL, number of independent addresses, number of daily active addresses, daily transaction volume and other data dimensions. Looking back at Arbitrum One’s growth process in the past three years, it is not difficult to find that it is in the L2 track. Always stay ahead of the curve.

TVL usually represents the amount of funds available within the ecosystem, and since its birth, Arbitrum One TVL has consistently topped the list of L2 for a long time:According to L2 Beat data, on August 31, 2022, the TVL of the one-year-old Arbitrum One increased from almost 0 to 3.33 billion US dollars; on August 31, 2023, the TVL of the two-year-old Arbitrum One increased to 66.7 billion US dollars, TVL doubled during the deep bear stage of the market; and by August 31, 2024, the TVL of the three-year-old Arbitrum One increased to US$14.77 billion, and the peak TVL in April was more than US$20 billion, accounting for 1% of the total L2 TVL With a market share of about 65%, and with a huge amount of capital, Arbitrum One still achieved a growth of over 450% with the arrival of a new cycle.

The number of addresses is an important data to measure the size of ecological users. There are only a handful of projects in L2 that have exceeded the tens of millions of addresses, and Arbitrum One is one of them:According to arbiscan.io data, as of August 28, 2024, the number of Arbitrum One independent addresses was 37.47 million. According to Growthepie data, Arbitrum One had 1.48 million daily active addresses on May 18, 2024, once surpassing Solana, which was unparalleled in the Meme craze.

In addition, according to the L2 report data released by Coin98 Analytics: the number of Arbitrum One independent addresses increased from 19.88 million to 33.24 million in the Q2 quarter of 2024. The total number of independent addresses ranked third among all 11 mainstream L2s counted, and the quarterly increase exceeded 67 %; in the past July, the number of independent addresses of Arbitrum One increased to 35.77 million, a monthly increase of more than 7%. It is not difficult to see the long-term growth momentum of Arbitrum One.

Transaction volume not only represents the activity level of ecological users, but the higher daily transaction volume is strong evidence that L2 performance has withstood the test. Arbitrum One still performs well in this regard:Arbitrum One has now processed more than 900 million transactions. According to Dune data, Arbitrum’s daily trading volume broke a new high and reached 5.08 million on December 16, 2023. Arbitrum’s current daily trading volume is about 2 million, ranking second only to Base, and it is also among the first batch of mainnet launches. The OP is about 500,000 transactions, while the daily transaction volume of the Ethereum mainnet has remained at about 1.1 million transactions for most of this year.

There was a very vivid metaphor for the Arbitrum One community:

If the L2 competition in the past three years was a series of exams, Arbitrum One is like a candidate who has never fallen out of the top three in terms of single subject scores and overall strength. No one will deny its achievements on the L2 track.

It also drives more people to explore:

In this industry, we are used to seeing short-lived dramas. What efforts have been put into making Arbitrum One everlasting?

Attribution: Technology iteration + ecological incentives create an all-inclusive Arbitrum ecosystem

Funds and users will not come in for no reason. The most fundamental driving force is: ecology.

In the eyes of many community members: Arbitrum is Ethereum.On the one hand, this is due to the Arbitrum ecosystem attracting a number of leading Ethereum ecological projects to settle in. On the other hand, it is also due to Arbitrum’s innovative ability to frequently produce high-quality applications.

Unlike many L2 rising stars who strive to differentiate themselves in market segments in the face of homogeneous competition, Arbitrum, as one of the first Optimistic Rollups L2 to launch on the main network, focuses on a “big and comprehensive” ecological style. By ArbitrumEncyclopedia Portal The page shows that there are currently more than 2,000 Arbitrum ecological projects, and the richness is comparable to Ethereum.

Perfect infrastructure is a necessary condition for ecological stability and good development.As a fully EVM-compatible L2, Arbitrum can not only enjoy Ethereum’s complete infrastructure, but also have greater flexibility. The infrastructure products in the ecosystem include wallet adaptation support, cross-chain bridges, developer tools, etc. , according to the Portal, there are 60 bridging projects within the ecosystem, 13 centralized exchanges, 76 wallets, 33 data analysis tools, 13 oracles, and 79 developer tools, further improving the usability of the network.

DeFi is the cornerstone of the ecosystem,According to Portal, there are more than 373 DeFi projects in the Arbitrum ecosystem, including 64 Dex projects, 48 ​​lending projects, and 26 stablecoin projects. The DeFi troika has complete elements, and other project categories include derivatives, perpetual contracts, DeFi tools, liquidity management, income aggregation, re-pledge and other sectors.

Among them, we can see not only established DeFi such as Uniswap, 1inch, AAVE, Compound, Curve, DODO, Sushiswap, etc., but also native DeFi innovation projects rooted in Arbitrum that have achieved rapid growth, such as perpetual contract products GMX and Dex products. Camelot et al.

Entering 2024, we can still see Arbitrum being active in the DeFi field. New projects include Robinhood, Renzo, coW Swap, etc., all of which have made significant contributions to Arbitrum TVL and on-chain activity.

As an L2 project launching on the mainnet in 2021, Arbitrum will not miss the NFT craze:According to the Portal, there are more than 74 NFT projects in the Arbitrum ecosystem, including 15 NFT Marketplace projects, 28 NFT projects, 12 NFT tools, and 10 NFTFi projects. Users can not only buy/sell freely, but also participate through NFT Lending and other DeFi gameplay. With complete and comprehensive support, the Arbitrum ecosystem has also attracted many well-known NFT projects, including OpenSea, NFTScan, and Azuki, which just settled in this year.

Speaking of NFT, we have to mention the game sector that is deeply linked to NFT:According to the Portal, there are more than 76 game projects in the Arbitrum ecosystem, covering GameFi, action, adventure, RPG, leisure and other sectors. The most talked about among them is the Metaverse project Treasure DAO supported by Offchain labs.

As the game ecological center of Arbitrum, Treasure DAO aims to build a “decentralized Nintendo”. It came into public view due to the fire of the game The Beacon at the end of 2022. In less than 9 days after it was launched, the number of NFT purchases of the creation character of The Beacon game A whopping 34394 times (0.031E per founding character). Other Treasure DAO on-chain games include Bridgeworld, Smolverse, etc. Each game is connected to each other through the native token MAGIC as a shared currency, and in-game NFTs can be traded through the trading platform Trove. Through diversified gameplay and the prosperity of the community, Treasure DAO is an important force in the Arbitrum ecological game landscape.

As an important entrance for incremental users of Web3, games have always been a major focus of the Arbitrum ecosystem. New projects entering the ecosystem this year include Pirate Nation – Apex Chain, InfiniGods, Avarik Saga and many other high-quality chain games.

The scale effect formed by Arbitrum’s prosperous ecosystem has provided strong support for its position as a leader in L2. Behind this prosperity, it is due to Arbitrum’s continuous iteration and optimization as the underlying platform to better empower developers. , it would also be inseparable from the all-round support for projects within the ecosystem for three years.

In terms of technical support, Arbitrum continues to make efforts in two major directions: one vertical and one horizontal.

The vertical strategy can be simply understood as Arbitrum’s continuous in-depth exploration of blockchain performance and developer experience. By launching multiple technical iterations and functional innovations, it aims to become the preferred platform for developers to build projects.

Nitro upgrade is one of the powerful proofs:In August 2022, Arbitrum One successfully upgraded to the Nitro version. By supporting Nitro code compiled in WASM for Arbitrum’s interactive fraud proof, Nitro enables Arbitrum to achieve higher throughput, faster finality and more effective disputes. solve. According to data released by the official team, after Arbitrum Nitro is run, L2 execution speed increases by 20-50 times, and transaction fees are further reduced.

Another much-discussed technology innovation lies in AnyTrust:By introducing a new security model called the Data Availability Committee (DAC), AnyTrust achieves ultra-low operating fees while maintaining Ethereum mainnet-level securityandFaster withdrawals.

At the special time of this year’s third anniversary, Arbitrum Stylus will be launched on the Arbitrum One and Nova mainnets:As an open source SDK developed by Arbitrum that supports building applications in multiple languages, Stylus enables developers to deploy applications using their favorite programming languages ​​(including Rust, C and C++) without being limited to traditional Solidity languages. This undoubtedly makes The Arbitrum ecosystem opens the door to applications in all industries and even the Web2 industry. As the largest execution layer upgrade in Arbitrum’s history, Arbitrum Stylus will take developer and user experience to the next level.

In addition, more technical support includes completing the Atlas upgrade and integrating the blob transaction function so that the minimum basic fee will be reduced to 0.01 gwei, launching a series of practical Arbitrum SDK tools, detailed development documents, active technical community response, etc., further lowering the threshold while providing developers with or more support.

The horizontal strategy can be simply understood as covering the diverse needs of a wider ecosystem. Faced with the differentiated considerations of different dApp developers in terms of speed, cost, security, etc., Arbitrum has also launched multi-chain products and RaaS services:

• Arbitrum One: L2 based on Arb Rollup technology basically inherits the Ethereum mainnet in terms of security, and is more suitable for building products with high security requirements such as DeFi.
• Arbitrum Nova: L2 built based on AnyTrust achieves a significant reduction in on-chain interaction costs by sacrificing some decentralization, and is more suitable for building products with high-frequency trading requirements such as GameFi.
• Arbitrum Orbit: Allows you to build your own private chain without permission, with the ability to customize throughput, privacy, Gas tokens, governance, etc., making it more suitable for products with highly customized needs.

The three major products each have their own strengths and have developed a thriving ecosystem in their respective areas of expertise: Arbitrum Nova has more than 120 ecological deployment projects, and since the beginning of the year, the Orbit chain has attracted more than 55 projects and launched 17 mainnets, with cumulative transaction volume More than 10 million, and more than 100 projects are being deployed. The full bloom of the three major product ecosystems will further accelerate the multi-chain era based on the Ethereum ecosystem and bring more possibilities to on-chain innovation.

In addition to technical support, ecological support is an indispensable and important catalyst for the explosion of applications. Arbitrum’s strong ecological incentives also further promote Arbitrum to become a fertile ground for innovation.

On the user side:

I believe everyone still remembers the Arbitrum Odyssey event that was packed with people in 2022. As an ecological experience reward program, participants will have the opportunity to receive NFT and more rewards after completing tasks. With the expectation that the governance token will be launched soon, a large number of new users are flooding in. Entry activities once led to increased transaction costs and even downtime, which also prompted Arbitrum to continuously seek performance optimization. In the subsequent Odyssey activities at different stages, it also attracted a large number of user participation.

In addition, ordinary users can also participateambassador program, contribute to the community by hosting events, creating content, spreading education, and building tools, and receive generous rewards and widespread recognition from the Arbitrum community.

On the developer side:

Starting in November 2023, Arbitrum will launch the Short-term Incentive Plan (STIP). Through community voting, 50 million ARB tokens will be distributed to major protocols in the Arbitrum ecosystem to increase user participation. 29 out of 95 projects that participated in the voting were selected, including Camelot, GMX, Galxe, Pendle, etc., and a total of 71.4 million ARB tokens were eventually distributed to 27 projects. Through on-chain data, we have also seen the results of incentives: various protocols have achieved overall growth in the number of daily active users (DAU), TVL, and transaction volume.

Based on the results of the Short-term Incentive Program (STIP), ArbitrumDAO launched the Long-term Incentive Pilot Program (LTIPP) this year, which will distribute 25 million to 45 million ARB to Arbitrum-based protocols to attract new users and Arbitrum liquidity And explore a more effective incentive system.

At the same time, Arbitrum also launched a bug bounty program to encourage developers to participate in security audits and vulnerability discovery. Depending on the vulnerability level, developers will have the opportunity to receive rewards ranging from US$1,000 to US$2 million. This initiative continues to enhance the security and reliability of the ecosystem.

In addition, the Arbitrum Foundation will also launch more Grant programs and hackathon activities. In June this year, with the approach of Arbitrum Stylus, Arbitrum also launched the Stylus Blitz Hackathon event on the Arbitrum Sepolia test network. Currently, the Arbitrum Foundation has completed three phases of the Grants program. , and according to Arbitrum’s official website, the fourth phase of the Arbitrum Foundation’s Grants funding program will soon open for registration.

Diversified incentive measures have attracted the participation of a large number of developers, and the abundant funds, resources, and technical support also allow developers to freely explore various innovations in a dynamic environment, ranging from financial applications to games, social platforms, and other fields. possibilities, injecting more driving force into Arbitrum’s ecological growth.

Outlook: The roadmap is progressing in an orderly manner, and Arbitrum One is ready to thrive in the future.

Of course, at such a memorable moment as the third anniversary, it is gratifying to review the past achievements, but we should also focus on future development strategies and growth potential.

On the one hand, as zkSync announced the airdrop plan in June 2024, the four former L2 kings have all launched tokens. On the other hand, they are facing the pursuit and competition of L2 rising stars such as Base, Blast, and Mantle. As one of the four L2 kings, As a member, how can Arbitrum start the second growth curve of the ecosystem and continue to consolidate its L2 leading position with the first TVL?

Through the information released recently, Arbitrum is clearly well prepared to face an increasingly treacherous market.

In terms of technology, last week Arbitrum technology service provider Offchain Labs announced its latest development blueprint.In addition to the above-mentioned Arbitrum Stylus will be launched on the Arbitrum One and Nova mainnets on the Arbitrum anniversary, the article also details more technical proposals planned by Offchain Labs for Arbitrum, including:

In the third quarter of 2024, Offchain Labs will complete the development of Arbitrum’s fast withdrawals;

Second half of 2024: Offchain Labs will complete the development of the new verification protocol Bounded Liquidity Delay (BoLD) to achieve permissionless verification, and will introduce review timeouts based on BoLD to limit repeated reviews or orderers going offline on the Arbitrum chain. Negative impact, providing a stronger censorship-resistant guarantee for the Arbitrum chain.

By 2025, Offchain Labs’ technical work focuses on including multi-client support, adaptive pricing, chain clustering, and promoting the implementation of decentralized sorters. In addition, more exploration of ZK + Optimistic hybrid proofs is also in progress. This will further improve Arbitrum’s performance, efficiency, interoperability, scalability and decentralization. The above proposals will be voted on on the chain through ArbitrumDAO, and will be implemented in an orderly manner after passing.

At the ecological level, the Arbitrum ecosystem has achieved many milestones in the first half of 2024: ApeCoin DAO, the decentralized autonomous organization behind ApeCoin, chose to launch ApeChain on Arbitrum; DuckChain used Arbitrum Orbit to become TON’s first L2; multiple social, NFT, Azuki, Farcaster and Robinhood, the leading projects in the DeFi field, have entered the Arbiturm ecosystem.

These achievements jointly demonstrate the lasting appeal of the Arbitrum ecosystem and will also become an important driving force for the continued active leadership of the Arbitrum ecosystem in the future. In the future, based on the three major products of Arbitrum One, Arbitrum Nova, and Arbitrum Orbit, Arbitrum will actively promote more cooperation and continue to make efforts in improving the ecological landscape, stimulating ecological innovation, and empowering ecological users.

Celebrate together: Have fun with the community and participate in celebrations to win generous rewards

Finally, for more users, compared to reviewing and looking forward, a more direct way to celebrate the third anniversary of Arbitrum One is to participate.

Around the third anniversary, the Arbitrum Chinese community has also launched a series of celebration activities. The most not to be missed is a unique AMA event that will be held at 21:00 on September 5.

Guests attending this event included Azuki Ecosystem Leader @whizwang, GMX core contributor @wiseoftheday, Chainlink Chinese Community Manager @legeishere, DuckChain founding member David, and SNZ Developer Relations Leader Leo.

In the meantime, like and retweetevent tweetsand followArbitrum Chinese official Twitter, the event will draw 10 lucky fans and give them surprise benefits of exquisite Arbitrum peripherals.

New and old friends gathered together to share interesting stories with Arbitrum, answer questions for new partners, and discuss the future of Arbitrum through exchanges and collisions.

Conclusion

There is no denying that the road ahead is difficult and dangerous.

Looking at the L2 track, on one side there are L2 rookies such as Base and Mantle who are eyeing them. Among the four former L2 kings, some projects seem to be lagging behind under the impact. On the other side, in this cycle, everyone can send out chains and everyone is sending out chains. , competition among thousands of chains in the market, and the community’s disenchantment with infrastructure narratives, have made L2 competition more variable.

But we can still see that for a real L2 leader like Arbitrum, the leading advantage it has accumulated cannot be challenged overnight. In particular, Arbitrum’s leading advantage is more due to the on-chain activity brought about by its rich ecology. This is even more difficult to replace in L2 competition.

As Arbitrum continues to improve and make breakthroughs in technology, users, and ecology, as well as the implementation of various milestones, we wish and look forward to Arbitrum bringing more innovation and development to L2 and even the entire industry in the future.

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